When Does The Walking Dead Season 5 Premiere?

UPDATE (10/8/14): During The Walking Dead 2014 San Diego Comic Con Panel on July 25, it was announced that Season 5 will premiere on October 12 at 9 p.m. ET. Get excited, people!

We have plenty of reasons to be excited for The Walking Dead Season 5 premiere, and let’s not forget that the show is part of Viggle's #FinallyFall October Challenge! When you check into 4 out of 6 shows included in the Challenge, you’ll receive 3K Viggle points, plus an automatic entry to win a free full season download of whichever show you want from the Viggle Store.

Thankfully, there's already some good S5 intel out there, and there should be more filming updates and Comic-Con appearances over the summer to feed our TWD addictions, but it won’t be the same until we see new footage. When will Season 5 premiere? Season 4’s official start date was revealed during Comic Con in July of last year, so that may be around when we hear about Season 5 too, but there are only four Sundays in October, so it’s going to be one of them.

Seasons 1, 2, 3, and 4 all premiered in October, and AMC is sticking with the same undead timeframe for Season 5. TWD Season 1 premiered on Halloween 2010. Season 2 kicked off on October 16, 2011. Season 3 premiered on October 14, 2012. Season 4 premiered on Sunday, October 13. No one is forcing us to throw down a Season 5 premiere guess, but we’ll go with Sunday, October 12, 2014. Circle the date now! And then cross it out and circle October 19 if they decide to switch gears and go for the third Sunday in pumpkin month.

You never know what AMC and the producers may decide to do differently in Season 5, but we figure if it ain’t broke, don’t mess with it — and the only thing “broke” about the 16-episode mid-October to late-March set-up of TWD is that we have to wait so long between seasons and during that awful midseason finale break.

Don’t forget, though — next year should be a bit different since the TWD spin-off is scheduled to premiere sometime in 2015, which means it will be timed either with the second half of Season 5 or the first half of Season 6. Or maybe the zombie gods will hear us and schedule the spin-off to air during the summer when there’s no TWD content.